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Born, raised and lived in Kansas all my life. Then in November of 2007, my husband and I moved to the east coast. My husband's dream has been to renovate an old house. So, here we are in a house built in 1890 and we work hard to keep it from falling down around our ears. Sometimes I wonder, "What were we thinking!?"
My blog is about what is happening in my life as I adjust to living in the south, adjust to being an empty nester, adjust to menopause, adjust to being a grandma...

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

The last couple of weeks it has been damp and warm here in northern North Carolina. Perfect weather for growing weird stuff.

I did a little searching of websites to help identify some of these fungi. One of the most helpful websites is here. You can click on the pictures to enlarge them.

This is growing between some granite rocks I have surrounding my herb garden. I think it is a hemlock polypore. It is as hard as the rocks around it.

I was unable to identify this one so I call it a brainshroom. Doesn't is look like a brain? There are several of these growing in my herb garden. This one is the largest measuring ten inches in diameter.

I think the next type of fungus is maybe jack o' lantern. While it is not orange like the ones in the pictures at the website, the shape and clustering is very similar. This is what it looks like one day.The next day it explodes and looks like this.

Then it looks like this the next day. It reminds me of a jack o' lantern that was left on the front porch too long. I think it looks more like something one of our dogs left in our yard.

Speaking of dogs... Our dog, Quade, alerted me to this lurking in our yard. I spied it while looking out the dining room window to see why he was barking.

This trio of toadstools is tucked in deep crevice in one of our trees. The third one is hiding behind these. I could not get a picture of it without climbing a ladder. The crevice is six feet off the ground.Here is an up close and personal look at the underside. The black things are large gnat like insects.

While not as lovely as the flowers growing in my gardens, fungus intrigues me.

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comments:

Those are fascinating fungi!!! I think fungi are very difficult to identify. We get a bright orange one on the edge of the golf course behind our house - - - and I've even used my Fungi Key at school to try to identify it, to no avail.

I don't think your ones that you thought were Jack-o-lanterns are big or orange enough. In that second picture they remind me of chantrels - - - though I'd never try to EAT a wild mushroom as I'd be sure to have a really poisonous one and die.